Friday, October 5, 2012

Romantic Comedy #10 - Sleepless in Seattle (1993)

Sleepless in Seattle is a strange movie to me. Maybe it's just that I don't get it? It's just not a romance - They don't even meet until the end! (Spoilers) I appreciate that it's an unconventional romance, and that's nice, but it just seems really shallow to me with out them ever meeting. It's not really a romance you can actually root for - there's no way I can ship Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks in this movie because I don't know how they interact.

There are other things that do work about this movie for me - I like Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks. I like the discussion about the nature of romantic comedies, and it's nice that they put Cary Grant in the movie. I did like the climax at the Empire State building. I didn't like the kid at all.

I actually thought Walter was not that bad a romantic option - It's not his fault he has allergies and a mild manner. I'm told this is a generational thing. The whole movie is actually sort of oddly dated. The discussions about the differences between men and women was pretty unrelatable to me - what they expected of men isn't at all what I would expect today.

So much of this movie is about "magic" and "sparks" and it's just doesn't have a theme that I enjoy or find interesting to explore. It seems very...silly. Also, Meg Ryan is totally a stalker in this movie. That's not love. That's obsession.

Sleepless and Seattle is the only movie in this genre that I was sort of worried about, and it turned out to be not that spectacular after all. Terrible? No, but "it's not terrible" isn't really a compliment.